From emo to demo, from daydreams to IRL – join, be inspired & participate as well.

Menu

10 years ago City of Rain saw the light

Date: April 13, 2013

Author: Anneli von Knorring

City of Rain was like a handshake, where we started our musical journey, our cooperation and our hopes and dreams. The world seemed a bright place full of opportunities. Nothing too hard to accomplish, nothing too impossible to do – but when looking back I realize I had no idea what I really wanted to do. I was very young and had the impression I had to make my mark on the world. I thought I had to be different, to walk my own path and preferably a path never walked before, by anyone. I think this is a rather usual perspective for a twenty-year-old and it is a part of life.

I recently came across a quote (it was by all means about typography, but I think it should apply to many things):

Don’t try to be original, just try to be good.

Of course we tried to be good while doing “City of Rain” and all the other tracks on Waterlilies with the limited experience and resources we had. We visited a local studio to mix that first song and the sound engineer said: “Oh, it seems you know what you’re doing”. I’m still very proud of that accomplishment. We’ve come a long way since then and we’ve learnt tons!

Going back to the quote I think it’s so easy to set the objectives too high. Sometimes aiming for the tree tops makes more sense than going for the stars, because climbing up the tree is quite doable, while building a staircase to the stars is not something I can really see myself doing in reality and the risk is that intimidated I don’t do anything instead. And, not to forget, if you aim for the stars and “only” reach the tree tops you will be disappointed – I know I would – so aim for something that can actually give you the pleasure of reaching your objective.

“City of Rain” is something of a lyrical installation. I’d say a staging of an emotional state. So on one hand it is a quite sad and thoughtful song and on the other hand, to me, it is a song that came about in complete innocence where anything was possible – and just recording the song on our own kind of proved that. We were young adults just trying out our wings. This was 10 years ago, in 2003. I can hardly believe it’s been 10 years already, but there it is!

Naturally 10 years of our musical collaboration must be celebrated! Therefore we have some fun exiting projects coming up this year. It will be of both musical and visual character so keep your eyes on the site 🙂